On Lloyd's of London, and BLATANT Plagiarism

In one of my many career iterations, I spent a week in training through Lloyd's of London, in Quality Assurance. (I was the head of my company's quality program, at the time.) It was boot camp for the anal retentive, taught by the most obsessive-compulsive, controlling Sonofa... I ever came across, professionally.

But there was a sort of mad purpose to his temperament, why Lloyd's would have selected him for the trainer. The whole world of quality assessment has to do with picking something apart, and finding out the parts and the process behind it, behind producing it well, and producing it consistently. The phenomenally obsessive-compulsive mind shines in this task.

It can be a tangible process, such as producing widgets from widget parts. Or, it can be an intangible process, such as how to design an experiment. A process is simply a series of steps that must be sequentially undertaken to reach an end goal or product. Sound familiar, anyone? STEPS?

It's not so difficult for the average Joe to understand concrete examples, but what Mister Sonofa... got paid to do was to teach us all how to apply this same methodology to processes that are more abstract. This is the stuff of big money, in business. Suppose you have an entire research staff, and you want them to maximize their process for experimental design. Not so apparent, what to do, is it?

Today, I wanted to think a bit about PROCESSES. I've found that when you can identify something, give it a name, and recognize a process at work, then you can break the process down into more manageable parts, and work on mastery of a part, so the whole doesn't seem so impossible.

Or, maybe sometimes life just seems a bit overwhelming, just too much to handle. I have a rather autistic-like brain that takes in all manner of information and has problems sorting through what's important and what's not, so I get easily overwhelmed. At times like this, I like to be able to take on only a piece of life, something of the size I can comprehend at the moment.

OK, now, I have to confess that I just blatantly plagiarized the bulleted 5 stages of change items below from this blog, today. But, I did it in the spirit of learning, to put it here because I figure something done once is worth doing multiple times, to get all the worth out of it, so I revisit the lessons I write about, later, and re-think them. I wanted this in my blog, to come back to think about, later. So, I plagiarized, I admit it!

These points are about the PROCESS of change, in one's life. Since recovery of any sort is such a process, I thought this was worth a look, and some contemplation.

It seems to me that sometimes the 5 stages of change are undergone within a STEP. And sometimes we have to get through some STEPS, to master one of the 5 stages of change, in our lives. But whichever is the case, this gives us more of a visible road map to look upon, as we change.

1. Pre-contemplation is when a person is not aware of a need to change or does not want to change. He/she often views the problem as belonging to someone else.
2. Contemplation is when a person becomes aware that he/she needs to change but has not made any move to do something about it. A person can be stuck in this stage for years.
3. Preparation is the person who has decided to make a change.
4. Action is when a person is ready to change and has begun to take some action toward the desired outcome although the issue has not yet been successfully resolved.
5. Maintenance is when the person reaches his/her goals through various action plans and now must consolidate the gains received in the actions and prevent a relapse.

Now, getting clean from a substance or making amends and such are pretty concrete examples of change. Therefore, it's rather easy to outline the process of how to get them done, and follow that process.

But where I find the above five points useful is in the changes we need to make where we get lost. For example, how to change really deeply embedded thinking processes, or behaviors, or reactions. Or how to change our relationships, from shallow, to fulfilling and intimate. That's where the money's at, in these 5 stages of change, for me.

So now, when I start to come aware of a not-so-concrete change that I need to undergo, one that is fuzzy in my mind, or not well-defined other than the end point I wish to achieve, I'm going to go to this model, and see where in these 5 stages of change I think I reside. It will give me a point of reference for progress.

And, perhaps most importantly, by defining a process using these 5 stages of change, I will better be able to have patience, and understand what is happening, when I feel stuck. I have a map, now, to see where I'm stuck, which stage. And I can see from the map where I'm at, and where I need to get.

And I can start thinking about how to get there, the next right step.

Just another tool, in my toolbox. Can't have too many of those, you know.

-The Traveler